Putin associates stashed billions in offshore accounts, leaked records from Panamanian law firm reveal

MOSCOW C A St. Petersburg concert cellist continues to be revealed because the linchpin in an elaborate financial empire that manages billions of dollars apparently linked to Vladimir Putin, papers published Sunday show.

Sergei Roldugin, a director from the St. Petersburg Conservatory and guest conductor in the Mariinsky Theatre, met Putin in the 1970s and it is one among the Russian president’s closest friends.

But papers leaked from Panamanian law practice Mossack Fonesca suggest the musician also holds vast assets apparently accustomed to benefit close associates of the Russian president.

Putin is among dozens of world leaders, including Syrian President Bashar Assad, and Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, who’ve been indirectly or directly linked via friends and family members to offshore companies within the vast leak authored by a large number of international media outlets.

The CBC reported Sunday that among the leaked records is information on the offshore assets of several hundred Canadians, including lawyers, mining and oil executives, and other business people. The broadcaster said they are not prominent personalities, however.

While Putin himself is not named in any of the documents, Roldugin is among several individuals close to the Russian president who seem to manage massive flows of cash via shell companies.

Roldugin owned three offshore companies: Sonnette Overseas, International Media Overseas and Raytar Limited. The firms have acquired lucrative assets together with a 12.5 percent stake in Video International, Russia’s largest advertising firm, the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists, among the groups that received the leaked documents, said in a summary published Sunday.

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Sonnette Overseas and International Media Overseas are intended by Bank of Russia, a privately operated St. Petersburg-based bank that the Usa sanctioned following the annexation of Crimea because of its close links to Putin’s group of friends.

Other prominent Russian names in the papers include Arkady and Boris Rotenburg, judo-sparring partners of Putin who have amassed fortunes during his Fifteen years in power and who have been also sanctioned by the U.S. as close Putin associates.

The Kremlin has not commented on the revelations. However, in an apparent mention of leak a week ago, Putin’s press secretary said western media and secret services were preparing an “information attack” against the Russian president ahead of parliamentary elections in September. “Here we see no intent to conduct objective investigations, we see just an intention to publish a hatchet job,” he said.



Mossack Fonesca didn’t serve only the Russian elite.

Putin’s arch enemy, Ukrainian president Petro Poroshenko, also appears to have made use of the Panamanian law firm.

Poroshenko, a chocolate tycoon who promised to market the majority of his assets throughout his campaign for that presidency, have become sole shareholder of a British Virgin Islands company called Prime Asset Partners Limited in August 2014, as Russian troops swarmed into Eastern Ukraine.

Poroshenko’s spokesman said the move was unrelated to political or military developments and said its establishment was part of moving to organize Roshen, Poroshenko’s company, on the market.



Also named may be the president of Argentina, Mauricio Macri, who had been director and vice president of a Bahamas company managed by Mossack Fonseca when he was a businessman and the mayor of Buenos Aires. A spokesman for Macri said obama never personally owned shares in the firm, a part of his family’s business.

The children of Nawaz Sharif, the Pakistani prime minister, setup four offshore companies, which owned a minimum of six upmarket properties overlooking London’s Hyde Park. Sharif denies any link to the properties.

Other world leaders named within the leaks include Sigmundur Davie Gunnlaugsson, pm of Iceland; Salman bin Abdulaziz bin Abdulrahman Al Saud, king of Saudi Arabia; Ayad Allawi, former pm of Iraq; Bidzina Ivanishvili, former prime minister of Georgia; Ali Abu al-Ragab, former prime minister of Jordan; Hamad bin Jassim bin Jaber Al Thani, former pm of Qatar; Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani, former emir of Qatar; Ahmad Ali al-Mirghani, former president of Sudan; Sheikh Khalifa bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan, president of UAE, and Pavlo Lazarenko, former pm of Ukraine.